Harriet beecher stowe essay

England, particularly of New England Calvinist.

Harriet Beechen Stows was born in Litchis, Connecticut, on June 14, 1811. She was the seventh of thirteen children in her family. Her writing was mainly influenced from her family, particularly her father. Her father was Lyman Beechen, born in 1775, who was determined to have a powerful role in the shaping of the new republic. He was a stern Calvinist and the pastor of a congregational church. He was the best known preacher of the antebellum era. In effect, her family was determined to convert, teach, and preach. Beechen was surrounded fully of “ moral oxygen” charged with “ intellectual electricity.

” In 1820, Lyman Beechen began to preach forcefully against slavery, due to his inspiration of the political debate over whether Missouri should be a free state or not. Stows, at a very young age, was deeply affected by her father’s message. At the age of ten, Stows was enrolled in the Litchis Academy, where she soon became the top of her class. Before she reached eleven she wrote her first composition, and at age twelve she won first prize for her essay “ Can theImmortality of the Soul be Proved by the Light of Nature? ” In 1824, she discovered her love for writing poems, when she attended a school her sister, Catherine Beechen, started. She began writing a poem called “ Colon,” which was about an early Greek convert to Christianity. Slavery had a huge impact on Harriet Beechen Store’s life. In 1849, she visited a Kentucky plantation and there, she witnessed the lives slaves live inside their cabins.

Stows and her brother, Henry, became deeply interested in the cause. In 1850, after he discussion over the Fugitive Slave Law, her antislavery feeling became intense. The Fugitive Slave Law would make it a crime to assist anyone escaping slavery. Criticizing slavery as a moral and spiritual wrong, Store’s father and brothers preached against the act, and Harriet seemed to write a parable which would inspire its readers to turn from sin. In 1850 to 1851, after she moved to Maine and upset about the Fugitive Slave Law, Harriet Beechen Stows set about writing, “ Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which first appeared in the “ National Era,” an antislavery newspaper.

Although, no one expected the outcome of the book to as successful as it was, three hundred thousand copies were sold within the first year. It was able to illustrate slavery’s effect on families, and to help readers empathic with enslaved characters. The characters in “ Uncle Tom’s Cabin” argued the causes of slavery, the Fugitive Slave Law, the future of freed people, and racism. The hero of “ Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is a colored man, a slave, who passed from the ownership of a Kentucky planter to that of a New Orleans gentleman and later to that of a common planter on the Red River. The book was later called a “ moral battle cry for freedom” by poet Longboats Hughes. On the other hand, the most liberal abolitionists felt the book was not strong enough to end slavery and suggested that Store’s main character, Tom, was not forceful enough. Moderate anti-slavery advocates and reformers had a completely different opinion, they complimented the book for putting a human face on those held in slavery, stressing the impact slavery had on families, and help the public relate and understand the difficulties of the enslaved mothers.

Harriet Beechen Stows went through a period of much poverty and hardship but with abundant observation and experience which afterwards she turned to her tales and novels. In 1856, Stows published her second anti-slavery novel, “ Drew, A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp,” and then went on with a third, “ The Minister’s Wooing. ” Harriet Beechen Stows was a phenomenal writer, whose work never failed to capture a strong message. Slavery was a big part of Store’s life, which by her influences made her the most influential women of her time.